All Articles Tagged thurrott

What’s better than a couple of well versed, well argued technologists presenting deeply reasoned and sharply insightful, fundamentally different but equally challenging, views on a critical topic? Well… nothing. They’re just hard to find given the intertube collective’s penchant for rewarding punditry and link baiting. Sometimes, however, we’re lucky enough to find a mix of both knowledge and provocation.

Cases in point: here were have noted Windows Super-Siter, Paul Thurrott, and accomplished Roughly-Drafted Apple Insider Prince McLean each presenting their own unique, multi-part perspectives on MobileMe.

Ready for the blow-by-blow? Continued after the break!

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While noted Windows pundit Paul Thurrott might be an out-of-the-closet iPhone lover, it seems his experiences with, and feelings for, MobileMe have been more towards the negative.

There have certainly been problems with MobileMe, and Apple has reached out to users as Casey posted yesterday. Now Thurrott has a leaked Apple sales note, reportedly sent out to redefine their language in light of these problems:

MobileMe Messaging Update MobileMe messaging is being updated effective immediately. In order to set appropriate expectations with our customers, focus your sales discussion on “automatic sync” rather than “push.” Additionally, we will no longer describe MobileMe as “Exchange for the rest of us.” When discussing the sync features of MobileMe, you may tell a customer that: Updates between me.com and iPhone or iPod touch will occur in a matter of seconds. Updates between me.com and Macs running Mac OS X Leopard and Windows PCs may take up to 15 minutes when MobileMe is set to sync automatically (Macs running Mac OS X Tiger may experience longer sync times).

Ouch! Want some double-ouch with a hefty side dish of rant? Check out Thurrott’s complete post where he focuses on lack of IE7 and Firefox support and, in part, takes David Pogue’s iPhone 3G review out for a ride…

Is Thurrott justified given Apple’s painful and still botched MobileMe roll-out? Or is he upset the mass-media is still dissing on Vista and wants to throw some fire Apple’s way? Little of both?

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry! Read the rest of this entry »

Windows pundit and out of the closet iPhone lover Paul Thurrott brings his usual brand of over-the-top Apple baiting and legitimate griping to bear on iTune’s recent announcement of “day and date” movie downloads, where iTunes will offer the latest from Hollywood for sale (not rental!) the same day as DVDs are released.

Thurrott rightly points out that $15 for no-extras, unilingual, often non-captioned, DRM-laden movies is just too pricey, and even (though in a later point) that Hollywood is charging apple a whopping $16 per film, meaning Apple is taking a $1 hit on every movie they sell (as a loss leader to drive iPhone and iPod sales).

And greedy, gluttonous movie studios wonder why people are willing to go through the hassle of pirating (JAR!) content?

He also tells us rental movies don’t get the “day and date” treatment, even though Hollywood grants that privilege to CinemaNow and Movielink (whom he makes sure to mention had “day-and-date” purchases before iTunes as well).

Although Apple link-bait to be sure, Thurrott does place some small blame on the movie industry. Please allow me to add massive quantities more. Like the record companies, terrified of Apple becoming the #1 seller of music (whoops! too late!), the movie industry wants to give competitors some competitive advantage, with apparently no consideration for consumers who, 70% of whom, according to US market share, have iPods, including the iPhone, and would benefit from this content being made available under the same terms (if not more fairly priced with fairer terms of use) via iTunes.

But the movie industry is afraid of Apple “ruining” their business the way Apple “ruined” music. It couldn’t possibly be that the advent of the internet allowed creators to connect with consumers without the usury and distribution oligopoly of old media?

What says Thurrot?

I’d point out two things: That the ongoing migration from physical media (VHS, DVD) in the entertainment world mirrors a similar migration in software delivery, from physical media (floppy, CD, DVD) to subscription services and cloud computing. More pertinent to this story however, is the notion that anyone who is buying digital movies from iTunes (or any other service) is simply wasting their money. The future is anywhere, anytime on-demand delivery of content, delivered as subscription service. The very notion that someone needs to “own” a movie is outdated, especially when that movie is an intangible and demonstrably inflexible DRM-encoded digital file.

Fairly priced, DRM-free content, let’s say new movie rentals for $2 and purchases for $4, and there would be no casual piracy (and greatly reduced piracy in general). Volume pricing, given the economy of moving around nearly-free bits via legitimate p2p within a network may not be a working business model for the movie industry, but then again, it could just make them a fortune…

At that point it becomes, like iTunes music, an impulse buy, and I know I would spend more per month on that than I do now on physical media that costs them much more to produce and distribute.

What do you think?

Sure, die hard Windows pundit Paul Thurrott has already stepped out of the iPhone closet, skewering Windows Mobile both in his blog and in a (cold medicine induced?) tirade during the Windows Weekly podcast on the TWiT network.

Now, in response to to the CTIA Conference’s official announcement of Windows Mobile 6.1, Thurrott once again gives anything but his usual spin:

Microsoft’s response to [the iPhone] threat has been abysmal. On the other hand, at least the company is responding. In the year since Apple first announced the iPhone, there’s been a sudden flurry of activity in the Windows Mobile world as Microsoft scrambles to embrace iPhone-like UIs and technologies in its own products. But Windows Mobile is hobbled by a number of factors, not the least of which is the gap between the software itself and the broken ecosystem (especially in the US) that is responsible for incorporating that software into devices and selling them to end users. The smart phone market isn’t like the PC market, and Microsoft can’t easily offer updates to existing Windows Mobile customers. Sometimes it can’t do so at all.

And, bringing to mind George Wallace’s comedy classic, “You know a better time to kick a man?”, Thurrott jumps on the downed OS maker thusly:

Lost amid all this, I think, is another indication of Microsoft’s inability to compete effectively in this market. They’re creating deceptive advertisements that make Windows Mobile look better than it really is. Here are two example “screenshots” of Windows Mobile 6, taken from the Microsoft Web site. See if you can spot the problem: [...] If you guessed, Windows Mobile doesn’t actually look anything like that, then you guessed correctly.

(Be sure to check out Thurrott’s complete post for the screenshots.)

How far behind the curve is Microsoft in the mobile OS space? Can they catch up to the iPhone? Are they even trying? What do you think?

Longtime Windows pundit Paul Thurrott has always had an interesting relationship with Apple. He has a MacBook, uses iPods, and link baits Apple fanboys every chance he gets.

But the times, they may be a changing! Look no further than the Windows Weekly Podcast, where Thurrott had this to say about Microsoft’s own Windows Mobile platform efforts when compared to the iPhone (transcribed):

“I have one very callous thing to say myself about the Windows Mobile guys, which is s**w them because, no offense, but seriously, you guys have had - I was there for the first version of WindowsCE, Pegasus I think it was called, and I have watched as they’ve mismanaged this smartphone market from day one. It has… it has always lagged behind, it’s not always been Microsoft’s fault - I understand part of it is just the nature of the business - but you know, Apple revolutionized the smartphone business not just with the hardware and the software but also with the way that they’re now presenting this stuff to users and updating the system over time, providing new functionality. This is something that doesn’t happen with other smartphones and it’s the type of thing where I can go to a Microsoft event and they can announce a new version of Windows Mobile, and that thing, I won’t see it in a store for another, you know, at the time, 18 months. That’s ridiculous. That’s ridiculous. Yeah, s**w ‘em. If a Windows Mobile device was better than an iPhone I would use it, but you would have to show me that device.”

Wow. Guess even Balmer hath no fury as a Windows pundit scorn…

While his original iPhone 1.0 review was mixed (or honest, as he claims, in the face of too many softball reviews from others), it slowly improved with firmware 1.3, and now with the beta of 2.0… Well, we’ll let iThurrott speak for himself:

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